1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print system, a relay apparatus, a print server, and a print method. The present invention particularly relates to a print system including a print server on the Internet and a print apparatus on a local network.
2. Description of the Related Art
With, for example, the popularization of a high-speed, high-capacity network and a reduction in cost of information infrastructures in businesses, SaaS (Software as a Service) which provides a software function on the Internet as a service is becoming prevalent. Even a print system which is conventionally built on a network in a local area such as an office is obliged to cope with SaaS as a service on the Internet. That is, it has become possible to build a print server on the Internet as SaaS, and manage a printer and a print job on a local network.
However, due, for example, to security concerns, the print server on the Internet cannot directly access the printer on the local network because of the protection provided by a firewall set between the local network and the Internet. Therefore, a print instruction is issued from the print server to the printer using, for example, the following configuration/sequence.
(1) The user displays a website provided by the print server on a web browser running on a terminal such as a PC on the local network.
(2) When the user performs an operation corresponding to a print instruction via the web browser, the instruction is sent from the web browser to the print server.
(3) The print server generates a response including the address of a managed/stored printer, an instruction for redirection to this address, and the location (URL (Uniform Resource Locator)) of document data to be printed, and sends it to the web browser.
(4) The web browser redirects the response to the address of the printer.
(5) The printer receives the redirected response. The printer then acquires the document data to be printed from that URL, and prints (pull-prints) it.
In this manner, because the print server cannot directly access the printer, it sends a print instruction including the location information of document data to be printed to the printer, and requests the printer to access it. The printer then pull-prints the document data. To achieve this feature, a printer which cooperates with the print server on the Internet needs the ability to execute pull-printing.
The following method has been proposed with regard to the conventional print system. The print server determines whether a printer has a pull-print function, and switches, in accordance with the determination result, the print instruction to be issued to the printer, between sending document data to be printed and providing notification of the location of the document data to be printed (see, for example, Japanese Patent No. 03899910).
When a print server as in the above-mentioned prior art is built as SaaS on the Internet, it cannot directly access a printer on a local network. Therefore, if the print server holds no information of each printer on the local network in advance, it cannot search the local network for this printer, and therefore can determine neither its location nor function. As a result, it is impossible to discriminate whether a print instruction which specifies the use of a pull-print function can be issued to an unregistered printer. Also, the print server on the Internet cannot issue a print instruction to a printer which does not have a function of executing pull-printing that uses SaaS on the Internet, such as a traditional printer or an inexpensive printer.
Furthermore, as is apparent from the above-mentioned example of the configuration/sequence of a print instruction, in a print system, the user must register information of a printer on a print server in advance in order to issue a print instruction from the print server to the printer. Although the above-mentioned prior art describes no method of registering a printer on the print server, the user must individually register printers present on the local network when their number is large, resulting in inconvenience for him or her.